~ politics for the people

The fact: The broken window that Ms Eagle claimed belonged to her office in fact lights a communal stairwell at Sherwood House, Wallasey.

It seems we may all have reason to thank the person who submitted a Freedom of Information request to Merseyside police, regarding the vandalism that Angela Eagle still alleges was done to her office.

Newspapers and TV stations are still reporting that supporters of Jeremy Corbyn threw a brick through Ms Eagle’s constituency office window in Sherwood House, Wallasey, on July 11-12, despite clear evidence that this is not what happened.

But now the police have been asked to explain everything they know. The request, dated July 16, runs as follows:

“What date and time was a broken window at Sherlock House reported to Police, in recent days?
“Was this window belonging to the constituency office of Angela Eagle or was it in the communal stair area of Sherlock House?
“What was the crime number associated with this crime?
“Has any culprit or motive been discovered?
“Has any cctv been looked at?
“Which organisation reported the broken window to the police?
“What is the spread of time that the window could have been broken?”

Ms Eagle is still pushing the story that Corbyn supporters have intimidated her. Yesterday she was claiming that a public meeting of Wallasey Labour members and supporters, called to discuss the party’s suspension amid claims of misbehaviour by members, as “bullying and intimidation”.

Senior members of the constituency party dispute her story, saying the suspension of official meetings, which also means it cannot submit motions to Labour’s national conference in September, has been done to silence dissent – not to stop harassment.

This Writer certainly finds it questionable that Ms Eagle and the Labour Party ‘machine’ (for want of a better word) can try to stop an entire constituency from discussing issues affecting it, while trying to dominate that same discussion in the media.

As Steve Walker, of Liverpool, tweeted yesterday: “Angela Eagle has truly lost the plot here, clearly desperate to avoid lying in the bed she’s made for herself – people smeared by secret allegations have no right to challenge them publicly?! Her ‘friends’, meanwhile, go whining to the Torygraph, calling a public “here’s our side of the story” meeting a ‘kangaroo court’. Seems to me a kangaroo court is *exactly* what secret (and already discredited) allegations heard in secret with no right of reply amount to.”

Hear, hear.

On 16th July 2016 the… FOI request was lodged with Merseyside Police. It was done by a publicly-engaged, public-spirited person who was quick to see the possibility / likelihood that national and local newspapers had come together almost as one to convey a kind of collective misrepresentation of the events.

This occurred on either 11th or 12th July in the area of Angela Eagle MP’s constituency office at Sherlock House, Manor Road, Wallasey, Merseyside.

We also made [a] separate FOI request… with the intention of confirming that Angela Eagle’s office window had not been broken, and also the nature of the projectile that was thrown and whether it was collected as evidence and was still in Merseyside Police’s possession.

We’ve already lodged an initial complaint with IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation), the press regulator, concerning a Daily Telegraph article dated 12th July, which we believe falls foul of the Editors’ Code of Conduct as regards accuracy, and some of the points raised here will make these two FOI requests interesting to watch as the situation develops.